<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>I'll Make It Worth Your While by Blue_Daddys_Girl</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29113746">I'll Make It Worth Your While</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Daddys_Girl/pseuds/Blue_Daddys_Girl'>Blue_Daddys_Girl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adoption, Assassination Plot(s), Beta is second in the Greek alphabet but my betas are number one in my heart, Big Guns and Big Hats, Bounty Hunters, Cad Bane adopts a child, Cad Bane grows a heart, Cad Bane starts the single dad club Din Djarin later joins, Canon-Typical Violence, Coruscant Underworld (Star Wars), Dead People, Family Fluff, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff, Found Family, Gangs, Gen, Mentor/Protégé, Or a child adopts Cad Bane, Original Character(s), POV Cad Bane, Planet Nar Shaddaa (Star Wars), Twi'leks (Star Wars), bounty hunting is a complicated profession</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-05-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 04:16:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>16,781</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29113746</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Daddys_Girl/pseuds/Blue_Daddys_Girl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Cad Bane is rescued from an ambush by a small Twi'lek street urchin, he does not foresee how much their meeting will change his life. </p><p>AU where Bane picks up a little rutian Twi'lek girl and before he knows it, turns into a dotting father.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cad Bane &amp; Original Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>85</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>51</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Crumbs</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashcroft_Writes/gifts">Ashcroft_Writes</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Watch this Ashcroft, that's my pride rock, hope you like the view lmao.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It all started with a bit of food.</p><p>Bane wasn't sure why he'd gone and given it to the child. Sure he was bored, munching on a pipiya wrap as he killed time waiting for his contact to show up, but watching a twi'lek street urchin munch on his leftovers wasn't entertaining.<br/>He certainly hadn't done it out of the goodness of his heart. Feeding a single soul for a single day was doing no kindness, not this deep in Coruscant's underbelly. A child this young... tossing scraps was just delaying the inevitable.<br/>She didn't say a thing either, just looked at him with her big purple eyes. She didn't seem scared, just curious.</p><p>Maybe, Cad thought, it was the colour of her skin, the same hue of blue as his, and her eyes so near his own red. Maybe when he looked at her he saw a little bit of himself, remembered a few of his own hungry days.</p><p>Cad did not get to dwell on his reasons much longer as a lanky weequay approached his table and the child disappeared in the blink of an eye, too wary to overstay her welcome in this new company.</p><p>'Well if it isn't Cad Bane hisself!' the weequay exclaimed. 'We were told you'd be punctual, but I'm impressed!'</p><p>'You're hardly early.'</p><p>'Anyway, now that we're both here I'll take you straight to the boss.'</p><p>Cad stood up, dusted off his hands of crumbs and followed the weequay. They walked for some time, going down a couple of levels and crossing open air markets before entering seedier alleys. The gang member prattled the entire way, reporting the local underworld gossip like some sort of holonews anchor. He asked Cad questions and seemed entirely undeterred by the bounty hunter's dogged silence.</p><p>Cad wasn't a fool. He'd been in the business for years. He knew what a distraction looked like, what an ambush felt like.</p><p>This was starting to look and feel a lot like both.</p><p>'Where are you taking me, exactly?' He asked the weequay.</p><p>His answer came in the shape of a blaster shot hitting the floor in front of him, and another puncturing the rim of his hat.</p><p>'Fuckers–' He growled, rolling away, his own blasters at the ready. 'What the kriff do you think you're doing?'</p><p>Cad ducked behind a bin and peeked out, looking around to see how many attackers there were– if any were visible. He shot his guide for good measure. Yells and squawks resonated down the alley, soon followed by jeers and calls to "come out" and not be "a coward". There were more than ten attackers narrowing in on him, Cad could tell. When a bolt hit the bin right over his shoulder, he realised he might be surrounded.<br/>He chose the only wise move in such a situation and booked it.</p><p>Cad wasn't familiar with the area, he was on the gang's turf, and worse, he had no idea why they were after him. He was clear with the law at the moment, had no bounty on his head that he was aware of. This was a ragtag group of local outlaws. He wasn't even familiar with their boss. <br/>Cad cursed under his breath, firing behind him blindly to slow the pursuit.</p><p>'Over here!' A little voice called out.</p><p>Cad Bane looked up and frowned at the sight of a small blue hand waving at him from a side lane on his right. A head peaked out. It was the twi'lek child he'd fed not half an hour ago.</p><p>This could be another trap, but if it wasn't... He took a sharp turn, opting to trust her, and nearly slammed head first into a wall. It wasn't a lane, it was a narrow chimney, a crease within the street's walls, filled with pipes. The girl was already halfway up one of them, looking down at him.</p><p>'Hurry!' She said, and went back to climbing.</p><p>Cad didn't need to be told twice. He made it up the wall, squeezing under a container of some sort and crawling his way free. There was no view of the street from where he stood, in an empty space amid cisterns and pipes like a clearing in a metal forest, but he could hear the racket of the gang below running past them.</p><p>He turned to the child, sitting on a pipe as far from him as possible in the cramped space. She was fiddling with a tear in her sleeve with a forlorn expression.</p><p>'Why did you help me?' He asked.</p><p>She gave him a glance before looking back at her torn sleeve. 'You gave me food.'</p><p>This made Cad scoff. 'You save me from a tight spot like that for the last third of my wrap? You sell your services short, little one. Any other reasons?'</p><p>The girl looked at him properly this time. She seemed more afraid now than ever before, wringing her fingers, biting on her chapped lips. It took a lot of courage for her to speak up, he could tell.</p><p>'I thought... you were kind before and... and maybe more food's in it for me?'</p><p>Cad realised he'd misjudged her. She was probably closer to eight standard years old, not five or six. She was just so small and scrawny.</p><p>He considered his situation in silence, watching her squirm as she waited for an answer.</p><p>'Sure I'll feed you, kid,' Cad said at last, 'But I can offer you more than just food if you'll help me.'</p><p>He recognised the light in the child's purple eyes. It was the spark of ambition, of desire. But it was quickly overshadowed by wariness.</p><p>'What do you want?'</p><p>'I have some grievances to settle now,' he said, taking off his hat and passing a finger over the hole punched through the leather. His damned hat. 'You know that gang, don't you? Take me to their hangout.'</p><p>'You're gonna kill them?' She asked.</p><p>'I'm gonna make it <em>worth your while</em>.'</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Smoke</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Cad Bane followed the child as she guided him first away, then up a level.</p><p>'You're taking me the long way around, aren't you?'</p><p>She nodded, pointed at neon signs in the distance.</p><p>'We want to be under there but the big street isn't safe.'</p><p>'Right. Let's take a break then,' Cad said, stopping at a food stand.</p><p>He wanted to let things settle down for the gang, to make them believe he'd escaped and run away and hopefully let their guard down, maybe thin their numbers by sending people out after him.<br/>Besides a promise was a promise. He ordered a tubber fried in nerf fat for his half starved friend. She looked up at him with eyes big as moons.</p><p>'I told you I'd feed you, didn't I? I'm a professional, kid, I don't break my word.'</p><p>She had drool all over her chin by the time it was ready. Cad watched her eat, tears rolling down her cheeks as she blew on each portion hurriedly, eager to tuck the food away to the safety of her belly, where no one could snatch it from her.</p><p>'What's your name, kid?' Cad asked, handing her a tissue to wipe her face with when she was done gobbling the last bite and licking the flimsi plate clean.</p><p>She accepted the tissue but used a finger to clean her face, licking off all the fat she could manage beforehand.</p><p>'I don't know,' she said at last, shrugging. 'They call me Blue.'</p><p>'They?'</p><p>The shrug again. 'Other kids like me.'</p><p>Right. He daren't ask about her parents or any hints they might have left behind as to her real name. Probably had no memory of them.</p><p>'And how old are you, <em> Blue? </em> ' He asked, not liking the monicker. It was one he could have received too, in another life. But Bane had been too much of a <em> bane </em> to be known by anything else.</p><p>A third display of the shrug. It appeared to make up a large part of the young twi’lek’s vocabulary.</p><p>'I don't know. Skip says I'm like her, and she says she's nine. But really I don't know.'</p><p>'Right. Prime age to start on your first job. Break's over. Take me to them. And any information you have on that gang will net you a bigger reward, if it's useful.'</p><p>'Who, the Buzards?' Blue asked, 'that's the ones that were running after you right? You killed Merkit, right?'</p><p>'If that's the weequay's name, then sure. He had it coming. Whoever put a hole in my hat also has something big coming.'</p><p>Blue led again, filling him in with what she knew. It wasn't much, but street urchins always were a reliable source of information about the undercurrents of power in the streets they called home. The girl told him when the Buzards had first appeared, how fast they had grown, which of their members had been local thugs before their arrival, which gangs they had suppressed to carve out a turf...</p><p>She didn't know why they would want a bounty hunter like him, and had no great understanding of money. She had no idea what hiring him cost and whether the Buzards were likely to be able to afford him.</p><p>His contact had told him they were, but Cad clearly had extended too much trust to the man.</p><p>The child took him down a back-alley between a brothel and a cantina, squeezing between bins and converters until they reached the back of the buildings, which turned out to be the back of the local spire, a sheer drop into the unknown depth of Coruscant behind a metallic mesh fence. She climbed up and over it and took them down a service ladder, the void at their back, and then across a jutting roof and balancing onto pipes to another ladder. They alighted in a darkened landing pad littered with boxes and crates. If the gang owned a cargo ship, it was nowhere in sight.</p><p>'We're here,' Blue said, crouching behind a crate. 'That house, it's theirs. But I don't know what's inside. I've never been.'</p><p>Cad surveyed the dingy yard and the blocky two-storey duracrete building that housed the Buzards gang. It bent at a ninety degree angle, one side separating the landing pad from the street, another running along the durasteel surface of a much taller structure. There were people on both wings, but one only had lights on the top floor. Most likely to be private quarters. Faint shouts and laughter could be heard from within.</p><p>The bounty hunter considered his small guide. She had done her part and he fully intended to hold up his side of their bargain, but he felt uneasy. The simplest would be to pay her. Just the pocket change he carried on him would represent a fortune to her. But Cad knew what would happen if he did that. She'd eat well for a while, and if she wasn't seen or ratted out, she'd put on some weight, her lekku would perk up, look a little plump. And then the bigger, meaner kids would sniff the money on her, they would corner her and beat her until they'd squeezed every last credit out of her, and then some.</p><p>'How long have you been on the streets?'</p><p>She gave him a reproachful look. 'I already told you I'm not sure how old I am.'</p><p>Cad frowned. 'So your answer to my question is "as long as I can remember".'</p><p>The child didn't dignify him with a reply or even a look. She peaked over her crate, intent on the building ahead. Cad suppressed a smile. She'd grown awfully comfortable around him in a very short amount of time.<br/>He could imagine her growing into a fearsome hunter. She had all the traits for it: the dedication, the focus, the agility, the patience, and the bad attitude.</p><p>She flinched when one of the doors opened and a drunk abednedo stepped out. She squeezed her lekku and gave Cad a half panicked look. The sight was sobering: a reminder that she was just a waif, and she'd risked more than she ought to for his sake.<br/>Cad put a hand over her trembling shoulder and brought a finger to his lips. She nodded, and they waited for the abednedo to finish with his piss and go back inside.</p><p>'You've done enough,' Cad said, patting Blue's head. 'You can stay hidden here, or even better, go and wait for me around the cafe we first met at. If I don't make it there tonight, I'll be back tomorrow.'</p><p>The child gave him a dubious look, clearly unsure of his odds up against an entire gang. Cad Bane was in no mood to justify himself or show off to a child however, and turned away without another word.</p><p>He slunk from the cover of piles of boxes to a row of speeder bikes in various states of disrepair. He poked at them for a moment, thinking about possible get-away options, but he didn't plan on leaving anyone alive to chase him, so he moved on, hugging the walls, listening.<br/>Cad took out a couple of smoke bombs from his belt and with his usual swagger, slapped the door controls and stepped into the room.</p><p>Two zabraks and the abednedo gawked at him, looking up from a sabacc game. He shot them all before they could say a word or sound the alarm. The noise of blasterfire did bring in some curious weequays regardless, all easily dispatched in turn. <em> What a delightfully diverse gang</em>, Cad thought to himself as he shot a human late to the party.</p><p>He surveyed the room. It was just a box of permacrete with two doorways leading further into the building, filled with racks of tools and old speeder frames under sheets. It looked like a poorly outfitted repair shop. The sabacc players had made their seats and table out of food delivery boxes stamped with the SoulFood company logo. Cheap all around.<br/>Cad rigged the room with four precision mines, tossed a smoke bomb in one doorway and stepped through the other.</p><p>He worked silently, methodically, thriving to take as many Buzards by surprise as possible without losing time on stealth. He was twelve kills into his murdering spree when a man came out of nowhere and punched him square in the face.</p><p>Cad shot blindly, stumbling back into a staircase. The man, so deeply tattooed it took a moment to realise he was human and not some pasty skinned zabrak, roared and charged him. Cad rocketed away just in time to escape his attacker's unwelcome embrace. He shot up the stairs, firing at everything that moved. There were too many up there, mostly humans, shooting back at him from the cover of open doorways. He tossed his other smoke bomb down the corridor and turned his attention back to the nerf-headed man still trying to grab him from the bottom of the stairs.</p><p>Who brought fists to a blaster fight?</p><p>Cad fired and the man dodged enough to take it in the shoulder and survive. He roared, and closed a massive, meaty hand around Cad's ankle. Before he could activate his jetboots again, he was flying by entirely different means.<br/>Cad broke his fall and recovered just in time to evade another grab from the man's massive paws. He ducked away, swearing.</p><p>'Where do you think you're going, Cad Bane?!' The man boomed. 'You were invited here, after all. You're being a very rude guest!'</p><p>'Oh? So you're the one who placed the contract on Val Nusa and requested me? You've got some guts, calling <em> me </em> rude. I may not need an introduction, but you definitely do.'</p><p>'Boss! Are you alright?'</p><p>Some of the man's minions came piling down the staircase, tears streaming down their faces from the irritant gas still billowing upstairs. Just how many vermin were packed into this hideout?</p><p>'I hope you realise there's no money in this for you,' Cad said.</p><p>The man extended an arm to stop his cronies. He had six at his back now. Reasonable, Cad thought. He only needed them to follow him into the room he'd rigged, make it to the outside door and trigger–</p><p>The Buzards' leader gave Cad a leary grin. 'Name's Ou-Burn,' he said, 'and I'll happily get your hide for free.'</p><p>Cad froze at the sound of the exit door whooshing open behind him. A weequay stood in the doorway with a blaster rifle trained at him. He was surrounded. </p><p>'Ya gonna suffer for what ya did to Merkit!' The weequay spat.</p><p>Cad pointed one of his blasters at him. Things weren't looking good, but not impossible. If Cad was lucky enough to hit both targets while looking at only one, he could even make a clean exit.</p><p>'Drop your weapons,' Ou-Burn said, 'it's over.'</p><p>Cad snorted. 'Hardly. I still have a blaster on you,' he said, 'and I'm the spiteful type.'</p><p>More guns were raised up against him, cronies growing restless behind their boss, chomping at the bit. Tension was building. Cad needed to be the one to break the status quo, to–</p><p>The weequay in the doorway let out a loud rasp, startling everyone. No shots had been fired, and all stared at him as he convulsed, face warped in a mask of pain and horror, and fell to his knees and then face first into the floor.</p><p>A knife's hilt was sticking out of his back, and his killer looked in frightened awe at Cad, purple eyes big as saucers.</p><p>Blue darted away and Cad didn't lose a second to seize the opportunity she'd gifted him: he fired both blasters at Ou-Burn and ran out of the room after her. He picked her up as he caught up with her in the middle of the landing pad and triggered the mines.</p><p>Cad was blown off his feet by the blast and they tumbled hard on the floor, smacking into one of the many crates that dotted the yard.</p><p>'Ooowww,' Blue moaned, holding her head in her hands, rubbing at her ear-cones. 'That hurt!'</p><p>'Be glad you're in one piece,' Cad said, getting up and dusting himself. He went to survey his handiwork, blaster out in case any of the Buzards had survived the blast. 'It's more than they can say.'</p><p>There were no signs of life in the smoking rubble. One of the pillars Cad had blown had been a supporting one, and the entire wing had come down, crashing even the first floor. If anyone was alive under there, he wasn't willing to dig them out just to shoot them.</p><p>It was a shame things had turned out that way, as he still wasn't sure <em> why </em> this particular gang leader had decided to pick a bone with him.<br/>Old grudge? Believed killing him would be a shortcut to fame and renown? Private contract for his head?<br/>No way to know now, not with police sirens wailing in the distance.</p><p>Cad turned back to the twi'lek girl and picked her up unceremoniously again. She squeaked when he jumped out of the landing platform and hung on to his jacket for dear life as he activated his jetboots and flew them back up a level, to the same cramped back-alley she had led him through earlier. </p><p>He let her down and she took a couple of wobbly steps before gasping and turning a worried face to him.</p><p>'My knife...' She said, 'it's still in– err...'</p><p>'Forget the knife,' Cad said. 'We've got more important things to discuss.'</p><p>She took a step back, wringing her hands again. 'We do?'</p><p>'Relax kid. You really helped me out back there. That was very stupid, and very brave of you to do.' He didn't ask if that was her first time killing someone. The fact was she had done it to help him, and he couldn't exactly repay such a debt with a free meal and a new pair of boots.</p><p>Credits, he'd already decided, would be as good as a death sentence.</p><p>'Why did you do it?' He asked.</p><p>The tips of her lekku curled, a gesture he didn't know how to interpret.</p><p>'You helped me. So I helped you.'</p><p>Cad Bane felt something, a twinge of apprehension in the face of the tremendous stupidity of what he was about to say, trepidation at the realisation it was the only right thing to do, wonder too, that there were still things for him to feel were "right", even if they would cost him, in some ways.</p><p>'Kid, listen. About your pay... How do you feel about becoming a bounty hunter?'</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Feisty</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Cad Bane's ship was a <em>Needle-Wing</em>, a luxury personal craft that had undergone several modifications as it went from one pirate gang to another. Cad had fitted it with a specialised airlock that connected to his rogue starfighter, and a few more automated guns. The Needle, as he called it, was not nearly as well equipped or as roomy as his old space station, but Cad had high hopes this one would not be ruined by kriffing Jedi. Four people could live in it comfortably if with little privacy, and the young twi'lek hardly took any more space than Todo 360.<br/>He gave her one of the empty rooms, making it clear it was hers to do with as she pleased, before taking her on a detailed and exhaustive tour of the ship. He showed her everything aboard, even the areas that were forbidden to her. He knew exactly what curiosity could do to people, so he made sure the cockpit, gunner nooks and reactor chambers were all rendered as boring as possible before setting them up as off limits.</p><p>But for all that she was eager to learn and nodded obediently at his instructions, the early days with his new ward did not go as smoothly as he had hoped. Blue was afraid to ask for anything herself and paralysed by any hint of conflict. He watched her stare at things in silence, worrying at her nails or looking at him from the corner of her eyes. The hunger was painted plain on her face, yet she remained silent, cautious. She behaved as if she were sharing a cage with a wild beast, one that looked dangerous but had not yet done anything to harm her. She walked around him as if on eggshells, skittish and frightful. It was obvious she'd been more relaxed in the open streets of Coruscant, where she'd always had the option to change her mind and run.</p><p>When she bumped into him and reacted as if that was an offence worthy of execution by firing squad, Cad couldn't suppress his exasperation. For a duros, exasperation always came with a display of fangs and Cad was the type to snarl with very little provocation anyway.<br/>The child froze and bolted away with a terrified squeal.</p><p>'Look what you've done!' Todo cried, boosting after her.</p><p>But Cad hadn't done <em>anything</em>. He cursed himself and his damned bleeding heart for taking in such a feral brat.</p><p>It took half an hour of Todo's relentless nagging before he caved in and followed the droid to the workshop at the back of the ship. The child had crawled in the small space between two crates like some loth-kit.</p><p>Cad folded his gangly frame until he was sitting cross legged in front of her, considering her silently, arm propped on his knee and chin resting on the palm of his hand.</p><p>There was a tiny, but not inexistent chance that he owed her his life. The least she deserved was some patience.</p><p>What was he supposed to say? He wasn't about to apologise for being himself. She had to get used to him, and fast. He always had the option to drop her somewhere, to some family looking to adopt, if she couldn’t get used to this new life. Maybe being a farmer on Ryloth would suit her better. But he knew she had the potential for this. The manner in which she’d killed that weequay, silent and deadly... Regardless, trust was something that built over time, and it was a slow and arduous process for Cad. Even then he'd been burnt often enough. He had no reason to think this waif would be any more trustful than he was.</p><p>Beyond such misgivings, Cad Bane, famed bounty hunter, had no idea how to talk to children. His last interaction with one before this debacle had been when he'd kidnapped some under the guise of a Jedi. They'd all been closer to toddlers, too. He hadn’t tried <em>talking</em> to them.</p><p>He sighed, rubbed his brow, and in the end chose to trust that the kid was smart enough to take a little bit of honesty.</p><p>'Do you know what I am?' He asked, waving at his face.</p><p>'Duros.' Came the answer, barely audible.</p><p>'That's right. I'm a duros. And you're a twi'lek. We're very different species. I assume that when you're exasperated you "roll your eyes"? Well, look at me rolling my eyes.' He took off his hat and leaned forward. 'Noticed anything? No. We don't have the same eyes, we don't have the same lips. I don't have a nose to scrunch up when something disgusts me. What we have is these–'</p><p>He flashed his fangs again, but the kid had crept up closer to the exit of her nook to see better instead of shying away.</p><p>'We use them in a lot of situations to mean a lot of feelings that you would express with your eyes, your mouth or even your lekku. You and I, we're different. So we'll have to make an effort to understand each other if this... <em>arrangement</em> is to work, understand?'</p><p>She nodded.</p><p>'I want to hear you agree,' Cad insisted, growling.</p><p>But Blue didn't flinch this time. 'I understand,' she said.</p><p>'Good. So let's set more rules. Kriff knows I don't like rules, but I guess it's alright if I'm the one setting them. If we're not sure what the other means, we're free to ask. Even in the middle of an argument. Alright? If you're not sure I'm angry, ask me. If I am, I'll tell you.'</p><p>'It's a... promise?'</p><p>'Yes. I promise I won’t hurt you, unless you sabotage the damned ship. In which case you're bound straight for the airlock.'</p><p>'Are you serious?' She asked, testing her new freedom with some trepidation.</p><p>'Yes,' he said, deadpan. 'Sabotage my ship or my weapons and I'll toss you out into space, I mean it. Touch a button that was forbidden and you might get away with a smack. Depending on the button. Bumping into me isn’t something to be afraid of. It’ll happen often enough, ship isn’t that big. Get used to it.'</p><p>He took a datapad out of his pocket, a cheap thing he'd planned on giving her, and started a list, which he titled "Surviving with Cad Bane", smiling privately to himself.<br/>He set down the "asking if unsure" rule as the first item of the list and wrote more rules as the two of them discussed what was allowed and what wasn't, and what to expect from certain actions and behaviours. Cad wondered briefly if he should include anything about unprompted murder and self-defence etiquette. These were <em>house rules</em> they were drafting after all. Though the Needle wasn’t exactly your average home, he decided to limit it to “what to do in case hostiles breach the ship”. She’d pick up the rest with the trade in good time.<br/>Blue warmed up to the exercise, asking questions now, and sharing information about herself and her way of reacting to things. He let her prattle on uninterrupted about the lekku signs she knew. This was good to know in more ways than one, Cad mused as he typed it all down. There were plenty of crazy twis out there waiting to be cashed in on some bounty. Knowing how to read their body language couldn't hurt.</p><p>'Here,' he said, handing her the tablet, 'all done. Everything we discussed is on it, so if in doubt, refer to it before doing anything.'</p><p>She smiled and thanked him before shyly reaching out and taking the tablet. She looked at it, clearly unfamiliar with the object, before meeting his eyes and with new boldness, said: 'I can't read though.'</p><p>Cad cursed and waved his hand to calm Blue before she bolted again.</p><p>'No, I'm not annoyed at you!' He said, struggling not to be snappish. 'I'm annoyed at myself. Of course you don't read. I must be having a bad day, thinking some Coruscanti slum brat somehow got an education. Well. I'll download some material for you from the net before we travel to Nar Shaddaa.'</p><p>'What's that?'</p><p>'Bounty hunter's paradise.' He said, getting up. 'I've got to visit a fixer there, ask him some questions about that gang. Now come, I'll fix you some food.'</p><p>With their new rules in place smoothing things between them and the ship deep in hyperspace, Cad turned to teaching his ward how to use the galley. Hunger was a source of constant anxiety to her and he wanted her to feel in control of that aspect of her life. He also wanted her to be autonomous. Todo 360 couldn't cook for her, and his work would take him away for days at a time. There was no point taking the kid in to leave her sucking on wet rations.<br/>She took to his cooking lessons, such as they were, with steady seriousness and dedication. She was surprised to realise there could be more to food than opening a package and heating it up. Seasoning and spices shook the foundation of her tiny worldview to its core. Cad cackled for a solid minute after she bit on a hot pepper, not believing his warnings that "even cold food could be hot".</p><p>Within days she had caught up to him in skills, and by the time they exited hyperspace, she was the one cooking every meal.</p><p>Once cooking was out of the way, Cad turned his attention to the rest of her basic education. He got her to learn aurebesh and watch kid friendly study holos, digital courses made for spacer children, which, living on his ship, she officially was. Her knowledge was all over the place. Mostly street smarts, Coruscanti slang, and a surprisingly good eye for the value and chop rate of electronics and whatever tech she could get her hands on and pry open.<br/>To his surprise, she didn't take to studying with the same gusto she did cooking. In her defense, the teaching material was dry, and Todo was a poor assistant. There were no fun ways to learn the aurebesh, she needed to persevere and find her own motivation, as he was ill inclined to spend his time tutoring her.</p><p>In this, Cad received unexpected help from the Jedi.</p><p>He was rummaging through a box of spare parts looking for a fresh connector cable for the cockpit's communication board when a sharp gasp made him swivel round.<br/>The kid was watching the holonews, streaming silently on one of the consoles he'd retrofitted for her while elbows deep in a bowl of dough. A rutian twi'lek Jedi was shown in shaky footage, defending some important looking people, deflecting blaster fire in a flurry of lightsabers strikes. She made the acrobatics look effortless.<br/>The kid turned to him, a stunned look on her flour-dusted face.</p><p>'Who is she?' She asked him, a little breathless. Clearly her first taste of positive representation.</p><p>Cad grinned.</p><p>'Her name is written right there,' he said, pointing at the aurebesh characters moving across the bottom of the screen. 'If you learn your letters like I told you to, you can know her name, and if you can type her name, you can search for her on the console and learn a lot more about her.'</p><p>'Like all the cool stuff she does?'</p><p>'That's right. All she has done that is public record anyway.'</p><p>He didn't even have time to swap the connector cables before she barged in after him, a barely legible word scribbled on her tablet. She brandished it for Cad to see.</p><p>'Aayla! She's called Aayla Secgra!'</p><p>'<em>Secura</em>,' he corrected her, pointing at the offending letter. 'Usk and grek look similar, but usk is a square.'</p><p>She was over the moons with her achievement. 'How do I write my name?' She asked.</p><p>Cad grimaced, surprised it had taken this long to get to this conversation. He'd been calling her <em>kid</em> the whole time, reluctant to use such a soulless moniker as "Blue".</p><p>'I thought you didn't have a name,' he said, testing the waters.</p><p>She scrunched up her face, lekku twitching in what he now knew indicated uncertainty. 'Can't you show me how to write Blue?'</p><p>'If I'm going to help you write something, why don't we find you a better name?'</p><p>The concept of naming herself had never occurred to her, it seemed, which wasn't such a bad thing, Cad thought after pushing back on some terrible early ideas.</p><p>'And no you can't call yourself Tiny either, you won't stay tiny forever.'</p><p>'But I have a friend who–'</p><p>'Listen kid, we all have stupid friends. Pick something like a quality you have, or want to have. Or a thing you like. We can look it up in Ryl, see if it sounds nice.'</p><p>'What's Ryl?'</p><p>Cad growled. 'Come on, didn't you know any other twis? It's the main twi'lek language.'</p><p>'So what's "food" in Ryl?'</p><p>'Kid–'</p><p>'But you <em>said!</em> Something I like!'</p><p>'What about <em>Shaala</em>? That sounds nice,' Cad said, browsing the Ryl to Basic dictionary on his datapad.</p><p>'What does it mean?'</p><p>'Mushroom.'</p><p>The kid threw herself on the floor like a puppet whose strings were cut, a sigh like a death rattle escaping her.</p><p>'Why don't you pick yourself,' she cried out, frustrated. 'You disagree with all my ideas!'</p><p>'Sure,' Cad said. He typed a word, then another, and grinned, satisfied. 'I'll call you Meeyan then.'</p><p>'And what does that mean?' She asked, sitting back up, curious.</p><p>'It means “feisty”, and suits you perfectly.'</p><p>She looked at him quizzically, cocking her head to the side. ‘Did you cook me some <em>feisty</em>?’</p><p>Cad Bane only laughed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Surprise</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Please note that I have changed the tags on this work. I have gone from G to T+ and added three tags. This fic will remain family fluff oriented, but now that I have a more solid, in focus plot concerning Cad's activities, more dead bodies will show up. I'm not being gruesome, and hopefully never adding violence for the sake of violence, but I don't believe this is "appropriate for children" to read, as the G implies. </p><p>I'd also like to point out I'm including a bit of fauna invented by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashcroft_Writes/pseuds/Ashcroft_Writes">Ashcroft_Writes</a>.</p><p>It's just a wink, but I'm also plain gifting the whole fic, because their fabulous <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27869465">Idiot's Array</a> has given me a ton of food for thought on Bane's character, even though we're taking him down very different paths. If I'm going to steal the tags AND the beetles, I may as well give something back!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There were two types of people: those who took their ship down to Nar Shaddaa, and those too wise to fall for it twice. Cad leaned on the cautious side of that second group, and joined the many ships loosely parked in a wide elliptical orbit around the moon. This was the safest option short of landing in a remote swamp down on Nal Hutta, and that, Cad thought, said a lot about this place.</p><p>'It's a beginner's mistake,' he told the kid, Meeyan, as he typed instructions in the computer and matched their velocity to that of the other ships. 'One that the bounty hunters who start their career on Nar Shaddaa don't make. Once they get a solid ship, you'll never see them flying in it, not down there. The others, well, if they're bright they learn fast. Then they steal the ships of the dimmer ones. It's the circle of life. Or more of a straight line, in this case.'</p><p>'Did you lose a ship too?' Meeyan asked, voice carefully neutral.</p><p>'Yeah, my first time. It was a bolt bucket though, no great loss.'</p><p>'Did you steal a new one?'</p><p>'I crashed two and got away in a third. My first time on Narsh was... complicated.'</p><p>Meeyan squirmed silently in the co-pilot's seat, not daring to ask for the details.</p><p>'I'll tell you one day,' he said, 'right now it's time for me to go. But first, recite the rules to me.'</p><p>'All ship rules still apply,' she said, enumerating along on her fingers, 'I don't touch anything I'm not allowed to, I only come in the cockpit if there's an alarm, I let Todo do the things if there's an alarm anyway... Hmmm-'</p><p>'What about comms?'</p><p>'I don't pick up any! Also I don't let anyone in even if they say they know you. What else...'</p><p>'You finish your homework. You need to hurry with basic so you can start on Ryl and Huttese. I won't be gone for long. Don't destroy the furniture.'</p><p>'I'm not a scrap rat,' she muttered under her breath, walking after him as he made his way to the airlock.</p><p>Cad said nothing to that. She hadn't ripped the leather of any of the sofas, but she definitely had a destructive streak. He already needed replacement pots and pans and glassware parts for the hydroponic garden. He shook his head, wondering how costly this endeavour was going to turn out to be. At least he was saving time on cooking without having to default to rations.</p><p>'Todo, you're in charge.'</p><p>'Yes, of course master! But you do remember I'm a techno service droid, right? I'm not a babysitter.'</p><p>'I don't need babysitting!' Meeyan snapped, stalking back to her console.</p><p>'For the last time,' Cad said to the little droid, 'you are what I say you are. Go be a tutor and help the kid with her work.'</p><p>'Bane-'</p><p>'Todo?' Cad asked, fangs bared.</p><p>'Alright, alright...'</p><p>The droid boosted off after Meeyan and Cad left, wondering how big a mistake leaving these two alone would turn out to be. It was a small worry, soon dissolved into the greater pool of unease that had been coalescing at the back of his mind for days.</p><p>He took the Xanadu Blood down the gravity well, making for Hutta Town.</p><p>Though it might not be obvious from a cursory examination of his life, Cad Bane strove for control. Just because he could turn a chaotic situation to his advantage, and even have some fun with it, didn't mean that was how he liked to operate, far from it.<br/>The more information he had, the more control on a situation he gained, the higher his chances of success, which in turn meant better pay, reputation and jobs. Cad also liked to have backups to his backup plans, contingencies to his fail-safes. He was shrewd by nature, canny by profession.</p><p>The events that had unfolded on Coruscant sat ill with him, some creeping third sense chiming, one that had long kept him alive and that he was inclined to listen to.</p><p>Mul Muva was one of the best fixers on Narsh, and one of the very few of his calibre not directly under the thumb of Grakkus the Hutt. He worked hard to keep it that way, and his reputation meant everything to him. It made no sense for him to double-cross a hunter.<br/>Muva also specialised in assassinations. Cold bounties only. He'd know better than to trust a third rate Coruscanti slum gang to off Cad Bane of all people. Something else must be going on, and Cad hoped Muva would prove communicative. He was a real professional, and it'd be a shame for their relationship to end in bad blood.</p><p>Cad landed the Xanadu on one of Muva's private pads, locked the ship and walked through a moss garden, light on his feet, palm flush against one of his blasters, eyes scanning his surroundings. The fixer hardly needed an education on sniping, and he had settled himself in an appropriately high and isolated location at the top of a spire. The garden was bare and without cover.</p><p>Nar Shaddaa was one of these places that looked like they might be civilised. It had the spires, the lights, the traffic. It held on tight to its nickname of Little Coruscant, but in the end it was as grimmy and slimy as anything in Hutt possession. It was such a karkhole of a rotating dump, it always carried the scent of shit and rot, mold and barf, the whole shebang of life and death, and it was hard to distinguish anything above that general stench.</p><p>Yet Cad could taste something else floating over it, faint, unpleasant.</p><p>He pushed his tongue out beyond his fangs, mouth open to sample the evening air. He couldn't put a name on it, but it raised his hackles.</p><p>He knocked on the door and nothing happened, not even a peak from the TT-8L gatekeeper. Cad flipped the lid of the droid's peephole, and recoiled. It reeked of burnt metal and that same tang that had been dancing on the tip of his tongue, a sour smell he'd rarely sampled.</p><p><em>Jablogian blood</em>. A lot of it. A real bad sign coming from a jablogian fixer's house.</p><p>Cad swore and unholstered both blasters. He walked around the corner, regretting Todo's absence. Someone had gotten in there and made sure to leave the door inoperable. The wall of one-way glass that ran alongside the lounge where Muva did his dealings was blaster-proof. So how had the killer gotten in? Knocking on the front door?<br/>Cad boosted himself up, landing on the flat roof and finding his answer in the shape of a square of metal that had been cut out with a hot blade. Cad frowned. It looked a lot like lightsaber work, but he knew better. The metal hadn't melted enough for this to be a Jedi's doing. This was more contained. A specialised tool.</p><p>He pushed the makeshift hatch aside and dropped into Mul Muva's lounge, blasters at the ready.</p><p>He needn't have bothered. He was alone in the carnage. Broken glass displays, shredded furniture, and in the middle of it all, Mul Muva.</p><p>Cad didn't need to touch him or roll him over to know he was dead. He could see the hole in his cranium just fine from where he stood. He hissed and clicked angry durese expletives at the back of his throat. The killer had packed a punch, but the pool of purple blood oozing through the carpet told Cad something more...</p><p>He toed the dead man's shoulder to roll him on his back, flopping, rigor mortis not yet set. And sure enough it was there: a deep, angry gash across his livid goitre, the work of a vibro-blade.</p><p>It hadn't killed him, but he'd bled profusely before being shot. Cad wasn't sure what to make of it. A misguided strike from someone who favoured throat cutting and wasn't used to jablogian morphology? A form of torture? An attempt to make Muva speak while he bled all over himself?</p><p>Cad felt his unease crawl down his spine in cold tendrils. Keeping a gun at the ready just in case, he searched the rest of the home. Every drawer had been pulled and emptied. Pillows and mattresses had been slashed and gutted. Databases and computers were smashed beyond salvage, datapads and flimsi had been tossed to the recycler. There were no records left of Muva's dealings, no list of operatives or clients, or at least none Cad could find.<br/>It looked like the killer had been here for information, whether to steal it or to destroy it, Cad couldn't tell. It did not reassure him. Finding Muva dead now was one hell of a coincidence, and believing in those was another rookie mistake.</p><p>He returned to the man's body and producing out his own vibro blade, cut through his top, nicking the thick layer of blubber underneath without drawing blood.<br/>Cad could spot no bruises or trace of torture beyond the gash at Muva's throat, but then he wouldn't know if kicks or shocks delivered minutes before death would have had the time to bruise over. He wasn't some detective or exo-coroner.</p><p>'Who did this to you, huh? Same sleemo who tried to do me in? Used you to get to me? Surely not the other way around? Well... I'm sure you knew plenty of deranged killers.' He crouched by the man, looked into the beady yellow eyes, glazed over by death, and switched to formal durese. 'You were good at what you did and you can walk past your death with professional pride, I'll say. Now I hope you don't mind me using some of <em>you</em> to benefit those of us who've got to go on living...'</p><p>And with these words he cut the fat man's right hand at the wrist. He wiped the palm down on a clean spot of carpet and made his way to the painting of... Cad wasn't even sure what. Some abstract shape, lots of red.<br/>He unhooked the frame, and squinted at the wall beneath, looking for the hairline of cold air that would betray the invisible edges of the fixer's safe. He tapped along them, looking for the switch. When he hit it the wall... dissolved.</p><p>Cad had been impressed the first time he'd seen it and he was impressed still. There was no telling how much that sort of tech had cost Muva, but he was willing to bet it was well into five digits.<br/>If Muva had trusted Cad to know there was a safe, he had not trusted him to look as he typed his code. But he'd also not known enough about a duros' range of vision, so Cad knew the trick: he pressed the severed hand against the pad, ignoring the numbers. A scan ran, beeped, and the door swung open noiselessly. A biometric reader disguised as a numerical keyboard was very smart. Cad doubted the average hunter had enough brain cells to solve that one, even if gifted the hand.</p><p>The safe's content made Cad cackle. If the killer had been a thief, they must have walked away disappointed. One man's disappointment however...<br/>He took down several guns, including a brand new DL-44 that would be a great weapon for Meeyan to train for. What he saved here he could put towards kitchenware that would resist the girl's ferocious methods.<br/>There was also an entire stockpile of mag-lock bombs, toxin and electric taggers, and a handful of thermal detonators, still in their BlasTech packaging. Cad placed those at his belt, crooning, and the rest in a small bag he pulled out of one of his many coat pockets. A little case opened to reveal three thousand Republic credits and two large fire gems.</p><p>Was it a payment from a client not yet processed, or a bounty? There was no way of knowing, of course. Three thousands would balance things out for a few months with his new hanger-on, but fire gems...</p><p>He picked one up, ruby red between his sapphire fingers. An idea came to him then, and he pocketed the gem, leaving the other behind, nestled among a few bombs he placed back in. After all, he needed information, and this half plundered safe would make a powerful bargaining chip.</p><p>Cad left the same way he'd come and ran back to his ship. He tossed his spoils on the backseat of the Xanadu and took off, gliding down and down, going round the spire and weaving his way through the shanty structures of the local skyslum.</p><p>The Red Crik Cantina had not changed one bit. It still had the gaudiest neon signs on the block, the same gigantic holos of dancers going through the same tired routine, the same crowd of bright-eyed ruffians killing time between jobs, pissing their money away or worse, sabacc cards flying as fast and loose as insults and laughter.</p><p>The look of surprise on the bartender's face when he saw him was genuine. The dug's nostrils flared, jowls shaking. But the grin that followed was genuine too, and Cad clicked his tongue, annoyed. He really hoped the gem would ease this conversation. He'd left a... <em>substantial tab</em> on his last visit.</p><p>'Zilo crush me, if it isn't Cad bloody Bane! Fancy seeing you strut into my cantina like this!'</p><p>'Like what exactly?' Cad snapped, sitting himself on a high stool.</p><p>'Like you weren't gone for the better part of two years! Like you don't have a tab to settle! I was afraid a Jedi had gone and skewered you with one of their shiny swords, but I had a hunch if one got to you, it woulda made the holonews at least.'</p><p>'Your support and appreciation is heartwarming, Kello.'</p><p>'That's good to hear. I'm a big fan you know?' The dug said, smile unwavering as he uncorked a bottle of spotchka and served Cad a glass.</p><p>'This goes on my tab too?' Cad asked, flashing some teeth.</p><p>The man only laughed. Cad grabbed the glass and downed it. He set it back down on the counter bottom up.</p><p>'You still peddle in information, don't you Kello? Still the biggest gossip in town, aren't you?'</p><p>The man's smile only grew brighter. 'I have <em>no</em> <em>idea</em> what you mean! I keep a cantina. We even have rooms now!' He waved a paw at the ceiling above them. 'Very respectable business, you know!'</p><p>Cad Bane chuckled, and opening his coat, let a little bit of red glint in the dug's sight. 'I still think we could have us a little... private talk.'</p><p>Kello called out a name and a green twi'lek man walked out of the kitchen's doors, patting his hands clean on his apron. 'Look after the bar for a minute will you? My friend Bane wants to settle his tab. We'll be in my office.'</p><p>He jumped over the counter and gestured for Cad to follow him.</p><p>'Are you a smuggler now? Times are hard for you or what? Not enough Jedi to kill out there? Enough Temple heists?'</p><p>Cad snorted. No matter what he said, Kello was one of the biggest newsmongers on Narsh. 'No. I'm a hunter through and through, but you know how it is, right? Just like you running this fine establishment–' he waved his hand through the air, knowing full well Kello ran far more than what met the eyes at the Red Crik. 'Sometimes you do a job and you come by some valuables that aren't in your usual line of work.'</p><p>'And so you're thinking I'll do a little side hustle myself and be a fence for you? That's <em>really</em> not in my line of work.' The dug said, squinting his eyes suspiciously at Cad.</p><p>'Not at all.' He tossed the gem on the desk between them. 'I suppose that'll cover my tab and some more, yes? I'm after information, and I can offer a sweet deal.'</p><p>Kello picked the gem up, smacked it against the durasteel drawers behind him. It made its distinctive clinking sound, angry and sharp, as if screaming to be handled with better care.</p><p>The gem disappeared. 'I'm listening.'</p><p>Cad smiled, fangs carefully kept out of sight. That had gone smoother than expected, considering Kello had probably been able to build his new lodgings after Cad had blown up a whole corner of the top floor on his last visit.</p><p>'I went to pay a visit to Mul Muva,' he said, carefully considering his words. 'I took a job from him just last week. He contacted me while I was on Coruscant, paid my booking fee, everything in order.'</p><p>'I sense a <em>but</em> coming.'</p><p>'Maybe you're force sensitive, Kello? I'll ask a Jedi to come have a look at you next time I bump into one.'</p><p>'Oh, so a very <em>large but</em>.' The dug went on, grinning, daring Cad to take this further.</p><p>'Came here to talk to Muva because the job went... sideways.' Cad said, ignoring Kello's wisecracks. 'Looked an awful lot like I was being set up.'</p><p>Kello sobered up in an instant. His whiskers quivered, his brows furrowed. 'By Mul? No, come on, Bane! Man stole all the honour and decency out of his race. Never known him to default anyone. Never even runs a tab. Stars, the man even leaves tips! I can't believe he'd go behind you. He also isn't that stupid.'</p><p>'Well, I tend to agree. That's why I came in person you see, to ask for some... explanations and get a couple new jobs at cut rates, even things out between us.'</p><p>The man nodded, understanding Cad well enough. No matter what Mul might have intended, if he wanted to keep his reputation clean, he'd have to make some concessions.</p><p>'But, yeah, here's your <em>but</em>: I arrive and no one's opening the door.'</p><p>'What—' </p><p>'Kello, I want you to update me on everything you know. All the gossip you've been filtering for the past month. I'll pay you handsomely, I'll tell you where to find that gem's sister, and half a safe full of... <em>goods</em>. You're not a fence, but you're not stupid either, I'm sure you'll manage.'</p><p>'You don't mean at—' </p><p>'Do we have a deal?'</p><p>'Give me a minute!' Kello said, tapping at a comm furiously. Once he was satisfied, most likely with a trusted associate en route for Muva's place, he nodded to Cad. 'If your intel is worth it, you can have everything I've got. If there's another gem like this one, I'll even keep you up to date for another two months.'</p><p>'Excellent.' Cad said, before launching into a succinct retelling of his discovery of Mul Muva's body. He didn't get into the details, nothing about opening the safe, or what his problem with the fixer had been, but he gave Kello the necessary information for his friend to get in before any other vulture had the opportunity to ransack the place.</p><p>The dug's comm chirped and for a moment the two men just sat across from each other, silent.</p><p>'Where do you want me to start?'</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>In the end, none of Kello's intelligence answered Cad's questions. Nothing obvious, at least. Someone might be after him, or not; Muva's death might be a bad coincidence, or someone covering their tracks, or not... Either way Cad was done worrying about it. Time would tell, and when it came to playing a long con, he could be patient.<br/>He visited a few shops before going to another fixer, a pantoran woman working for Black Sun, in search of some quick and easy job that would help him wash his mouth from the foul aftertaste the mystery surrounding Muva and his cursed job had left there.</p><p>It was getting late, both locally and for his own body clock, so Cad high-tailed it back to the Needle, eager to be on his way and leave Narsh behind.</p><p>He was hungry and all this talking with unsavory people had left him testy. He wondered absent-mindedly if the kid would have cooked something for him too. He checked the Xanadu's chrono. He'd been gone for four hours, a long time to leave Todo alone with a half feral child, but he'd not received any pings, so he wasn't exactly worried.</p><p>That changed when he stepped out of the airlock and nearly tripped on a large box, collapsed on its side, pseudo-wood chips scattered everywhere.</p><p>'What the—'</p><p>Deeper in the ship, Meeyan screamed.</p><p>Cad raced down the corridor, LL-30s primed and ready. He found the open galley in pandemonium. The floor was littered with a mess of stuff, but the real sight was up in the air.<br/>He gasped as Meeyan flew past him, her hands clutching the legs of a monstrous iridescent spotted beetle. They were a delicacy from Kashyyyk, and he'd never seen one this big alive, or outside of a plate. Todo was in turn holding on to Meeyan, or her to him, it was hard to tell, with one of her legs wrapped around his neck.</p><p>'What in frozen hells!' Cad shouted over the din. 'Meeyan! What's going on?'</p><p>She twisted around to look at him even as the beetle tried to slam her into a wall to shake her off.</p><p>'It's his fault!' She screamed.</p><p>'Absolutely not! Master I- ouch, please stop!' Todo complained as Meeyan used her free leg to kick his head.</p><p>'He didn't read it to me! He didn't read the whole thing!'</p><p>'It was in the fine print! Nobody reads that!'</p><p>Cad watched, bemused, and not a little entertained, as the two yelled contradictory explanations while tethered to what they'd apparently intended as dinner. The bug joined the angry chorus, shrieking a high pitched trill. It swerved back towards the galley, its wings droning as it laboured to keep itself aloft. Cad let this go on for a while longer, watching Meeyan try to take the bug down by letting go of one side and snatching the base of its wings. A fine idea, but she lacked reach.<br/>He waited for the circus act to make its way back around to him and finally caught the kid's shirt with one hand, shooting the bug's head off with the other.</p><p>'You've made your point Todo,' Cad said as he put Meeyan back down, 'you're not a babysitter droid.'</p><p>Todo scoffed. 'This was hardly my fault!'</p><p>'If I recall correctly, I left you in charge, didn't I? It does make this mess your fault. What happened? And don't waste my time pointing fingers at each other! How did a live iridescent beetle get on board my ship?' He glared at Meeyan. 'What happened to all the rules you promised not to break? Was I a karking idiot for trusting you?'</p><p>'I didn't break any,' she mumbled, eyes furtive.</p><p>'Oh, is that right?'</p><p>Finding some fire in herself, probably from a sense of wounded righteousness, she launched herself in a rapid fire listing of all the rules she had not broken, because she'd simply bypassed them.</p><p>'When the ping came I went to the cockpit with Todo. I let him do everything. He said it was a ping from a droid store ship.'</p><p>'It was a flymart.' Todo chipped in.</p><p>'So I asked him to explain and he did. He read the manifest and said they had some of that wookie beetle and then, he said it was your favourite! So I said we should have it for dinner, that Todo could help me read a recipe.' She looked at her feet, squirming. 'We wanted to surprise you.'</p><p>Cad could not stop himself from laughing at that. The <em>surprise</em> had been a total success, at least. He had hoped Meeyan would have prepared something he could munch on before punching them back through hyperspace, but her trying to make some gourmet Kashyyyk bug meat had not entered his wildest expectations. The intention was sweet, but the result was disastrous and he couldn't exactly go soft on her now.</p><p>'Keep going,' he said, putting his stern face back on.</p><p>'I couldn't let anyone in the airlock, but Todo said the ship was all automated and I didn't need to open the airlock until after it was gone! Also, you said breaking things by accident wasn't bad! <em>And</em> I finished my homework.'</p><p>'Wait up kid, you're forgetting the part about payment here. What money did you buy this with? These bugs aren't exactly cheap.'</p><p>'Todo said there was a tab!'</p><p>Cad shot a look at his droid, eyes bulging. 'You opened a tab on a Hutt flymart?'</p><p>'You already had one on it!' Todo said cheerfully.</p><p>'So we didn't spend any money!' Meeyan added.</p><p>Cad groaned, massaging his brow, trying to keep a headache at bay. For Todo to not get a grasp of spending was one thing, but Meeyan was going to get money management lessons from tomorrow onward until he'd made her worthy of a spot in the banking clan.</p><p>'Alright, so you put me in debt to some flymart owned by Grakkus the Hutt without consulting me. I suppose it was not in the rules, but the lack of common sense here is concerning. Go on.'</p><p>'Mmmh... We opened the box and <em>it was Todo's fault</em>!' Meeyan exploded again, pointing a finger at the droid. 'He didn't warn me it'd be alive!'</p><p>'I didn't know it was alive!'</p><p>'It jumped in my face!'</p><p>'When I tried to torch it she sent me flying!'</p><p>'It has to be boiled, you're the one who said so!'</p><p>Cad watched them bicker some more, considering the situation. Crazy as it was, Meeyan had managed to bypass all the rules they'd set. She'd wormed her way through them just to get some food. And it <em>was</em> his favourite meat too, Todo wasn't wrong.<br/>He sighed, incapable to muster any anger, or even frustration. This was all too outlandish.</p><p>'You two,' he said, interrupting them before Meeyan could make good on her threat of <em>taking Todo's head apart and reassembling him backwards</em>, 'clean up the mess you've made before you start cooking dinner. Don't disturb me and call me when it's ready.'</p><p>Meeyan looked at him with surprise, but said nothing, probably counting her lucky stars that Cad left it at that.</p><p>'Where are you going?' Todo asked, bright and nosy as ever.</p><p>'I'll be in the cockpit. I need to settle my new tab with Grakkus,' Cad snapped, and with a shiver of a smile and a glance at Meeyan, 'and to edit the ship's rules. It's come to my attention that there are some loopholes that need fixing.'</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Handful</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>We're baaack! And I'd like to say, during this small hiatus, I got gifted the most amazing thing an author can receive:</p><div class="center">
  <p><br/>Fanart of Cad and (future) Meeyan in a mini-Bane outfit!!</p>
</div>This was done by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoisonousCephalopod/pseuds/PoisonousCephalopod">PoisonousCephalopod</a> who writes amazing Vader &amp; Leia, is a swell beta *and* draws great art. And I'm just very lucky to know her :-3<br/>Look at that wicked smile on Meeyan! She's dripping confidence and Cad is very much a proud dad already! She'll get her first headdress soon, and it's official, she'll just have to get a child sized duster at some point!</blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first time Cad Bane took Meeyan out for a bit of casual shopping, he chose their destination very carefully. He wanted somewhere safe enough that he didn't need to keep the kid on a leash. A place where no one would ask him <em> "how much for the twi" </em> or try to help themselves for free.<br/>
Though he rarely went, he quite enjoyed Alderaan, and it was safe, even outside of the capital, so that's what he settled on.</p><p>Meeyan shared none of his concerns, and spent the entire trip there bouncing around the ship like a kaffeinated tooka, yelling after Todo, the two of them making a list of things to buy that was quickly gearing them up for disappointment.</p><p>Cad's own list was very short. He needed a BlasTech licensed gunsmith and a kriffing break, either of which he was unlikely to find on this trip. </p><p>By the time they arrived, Meeyan was practically vibrating out of her own skin. It wasn't that it was her first time in a busy marketplace, but it was her first time being in one with credits to spend.</p><p>She burst out of the ship, Todo holding on to her by a lek, ready to run ahead despite Cad's warning to stay close to him. He tossed a couple of credits to the Ugnaughts who'd come to enquire about refuelling the ship and went to join her where she'd abruptly stopped at the edge of their landing pad.</p><p>'What, you getting second thoughts?' He asked.</p><p>She turned her magenta eyes to him, glowing red in the slanted light.</p><p>'I–' she closed her mouth, opened it again without making a sound, waved a helpless hand at the sight before them. 'It's so <em> green.' </em> She finally managed. 'And the... Those are mountains, right?'</p><p>Cad looked ahead again, properly looked, past the sprawling open air market outside Alsaraz City, to the green slopes of the Razadi range, up its jagged, snow-capped teeth, flaming orange and pink in the late afternoon light.</p><p>Meeyan's shock and look of pure awe should have been predictable. There were no mountains on Coruscant, no grass or snow. And eight hundred and forty levels below the surface, where he'd found her, there were not even spires or <em> sunsets. </em></p><p>'Yeah, mountains,' he said, and pointing at the highest peak, 'that's Alsarazi, means something about being the tallest. The city is named after it.'</p><p>'Is it the tallest of all mountain?'</p><p>'Maybe around here,' Cad snorted, 'but not even close on this planet. We'll fly by Aldera when we leave. The tallest one is next to it. Come on, let's get going. And remember now, stay close.'</p><p>Alsaraz-Adi market was known for its diversity and its maze-like layout. The saying went that if you saw something you liked, you had better buy it on the spot, because you would likely never find that specific stall again.</p><p>Cad had said as much to the kid, with the caveat that she was to report to him before spending her credits. He had spent many hours driving economic sense into her head since the <em> beetle debacle, </em> as he called it, but he didn't trust her yet.</p><p>And especially not here. Alsaraz-Adi truly had <em>everything.</em></p><p>Art, from miniature holopendants to meters tall Wroshyr wood sculpts, the artists working away, painting, carving or weaving on their newest project when they weren't selling their work. Plants of all shapes and sizes, from Tattooine sun-sprouts to umbaran black ferns and dathomirian mushlings. Clothes of countless colours and cuts, great rolls of fabric for those who preferred to make their own. Artisans and craftsmen working along merchants of jewellery, tech, droids, weapons, speeders and airbikes, even ship parts or, to Meeyan's astonishment, luxury furniture.</p><p>She pointed to an enormous red velvet couch probably designed with a morbidly obese Hutt in mind. 'Can I buy one of these?' she asked, tongue in cheek.</p><p>'Sure, when you have your own ship. And two thousand credits to blow on it.'</p><p>'When can I buy a ship?'</p><p>'Buy?' Cad scoffed. 'Aren't many bounty hunters who can afford to <em>buy</em> a ship before their first job.'</p><p>'So how do I get to my first job then?'</p><p>'I'll fly you there. But you should at least steal your first ride. Matter of pride.'</p><p>Meeyan nodded in acknowledgement but something else caught her attention and off she went, more concerned with the money she had at hand and the things she could spend it on today.</p><p>She raced from stall to stall, zigzagging down the path before running back to him and hurrying off again as soon as something new caught her eyes.<br/>
She was utterly unafraid of the crowds and moved through them with a natural grace, aware of everyone around her, never bumping into anything, even by accident, nor losing sight of Cad and Todo.</p><p>Her reaction to new things was interesting, if tiring. She would ask what it was, what it did, and then fall down a spiral of "why" until another thing caught her attention or Cad ran out of answers or patience.<br/>
At first these questions were directed at him or Todo—who had started to resign himself to his role as impromptu tutor for the child—but as they eased into a rhythm and she grew more confident, she started to ask the merchants themselves.<br/>
That made Cad's life easier, and he took a perverse pleasure in watching others flounder under the kid's relentless curiosity.</p><p>Surprisingly, Meeyan's boldness crumpled when they entered the livestock side of the market. She looked curiously at the aquariums from which Quarrens sold fish and molluscs, only to bolt at the sight of nerfs and banthas, which she'd never seen before. They passed their pens with her hiding under Cad's duster, a hand firmly tucked under his belt, like he might leave her behind with these shaggy monsters.<br/>
She was also unimpressed by the cages of kowakians, and stayed clear of the chained anoobas and massifs. Lots to work on, to desensitise her, Cad mused, but at least he wouldn't have to say no to a pet.</p><p>Dynamics changed again when the stalls around them changed to animal byproducts and then general foodstuff.</p><p>Meeyan was so thrilled by the bags of nuts, roasted kaf beans from Shili and multicoloured bundles of tufted grasses, so enthralled by sellers sifting crystal drop sugars, dicing fruits and pounding grains into sticky pastes to spin into candies, that she forgot to ask questions.<br/>
She walked and gaped in wonder, sniffed at the foreign spices tickling her nose, and all around made Cad doubt that he was doing the right thing by training her to be a bounty hunter.</p><p>Clearly she had the making of a passionate cook. Too bad there were no renown groups of mercenary chefs willing to take younglings in training. Or if there were, Cad had not heard of them. So not good enough in his book.</p><p>Eventually Meeyan ran back to him with fire in her eyes.</p><p>'I found what I want to spend my credits on!' She declared, grabbing Todo and Cad's coat lapel, trying to make them move faster, like someone might buy her thing before she got her chance. Cad followed, amused, but sobered when he saw the object of her desires: a rii cooker.</p><p>He let air out between his fangs in a whistling sigh. 'That's a cooking appliance.' He said. <em> Kriff, but he should have seen it coming. </em></p><p>She nodded, not catching his meaning. 'It makes rii on its own! I won't have to mind it! It even has a setting to make rii cake! And it has a timer!' She explained, buzzing with excitement. 'We could have hot rii cake in the morning without doing anything! It's super wizard!'</p><p>'Meeyan, it's a <em> cooking appliance. </em> The credits I gave you, they're for you to spend on yourself.'</p><p>She considered his words with growing distress. 'But... I want it for myself?'</p><p>'Then I'll buy it. For the ship. What is it anyway, ten credits?'</p><p>'Twenty-two,' the merchant replied.</p><p>Cad glared at the old human. 'What do you think this is? A cooker made in Kuat Drive Yards? D'you think I'm an idiot, buying a knockoff rii cooker for twenty?'</p><p>The woman scowled at him, making a vulgar gesture. 'Don't you want to please the child?'</p><p>'Sure, I'll go buy her a fancy one in Aldera, for twenty-two.'</p><p>'Sixteen,' the woman conceded.</p><p>'Twelve.'</p><p>'Fourteen, and a curse on all your cooking!'</p><p>Cad grinned. 'That's more like it.'</p><p>Credits passed hands in front of Meeyan's awestruck face. 'T- Thank you!'</p><p>'S'alright. Here, you carry it,' Cad said, handing the bag to Todo.</p><p>'Master! This is quite heavy!' The droid complained, flying low with the boxed up rii cooker grazing the floor. 'My fuel consumption–'</p><p>'Spare me the details of the fuel I buy for you!' Cad groaned, 'we'll stop in the droid sector before the end.'</p><p>Todo found new motivation at that, boosting up and flying ahead happily. Meeyan stayed behind instead of running after him, still holding on to Cad's duster. She was biting down on her lower lip, her signature "I've got things to say but you'll need to nag me about it" look on her face.</p><p>'What is it?' Cad asked pointedly.</p><p>'The credits I have,' she said, hand flitting over her pocket—another bad habit to train out of her—'can I spend them on food?'</p><p>'No,' Cad said, 'I'll buy you the food you want to try. Look for something that will last.'</p><p>It was crazy, he thought, that he had to teach selfishness and self-interest to anyone, but he could put things into perspective. He had spent a few years focusing on the things he thought he needed at the start of his career, rather than the things he <em> wanted. </em> Some of that was inevitable, part and parcel of the life of a debuting hunter. You had to find your style, build your arsenal, tinker with your ship, buy your way into many people's good books. But that lifestyle, always buying necessities, weapons, new upgrades... It made for a dry existence, more akin to surviving than living, despite the flow of credits. It defeated the point.<br/>
If Meeyan had survived childhood and grown up to be successful, she would likely have learnt this lesson on her own, eventually. Cad was hoping to curtail that process by a good decade.</p><p>He sighed. The little twi'lek was a nice kid and a fast learner, but Cad wasn't sure he himself was good material for a teacher.</p><p>'Here,' he said as he placed his hat on her head, 'don't lose it,' and with a huff, he hoisted her up and over his shoulders.</p><p>'Whoo, I can see everything!' She laughed, small hands drumming the top of his head.</p><p>'So let me know when you see the thing you want,' he said drily.</p><p>He bought them seafood skewers from a Mon Calamari, and they were still wandering slowly towards the droid and tech side of Alsaraz-Adi when Meeyan tapped on the right side of his neck.</p><p>'What are those?' She asked, tapping again. It was a trick he'd taught her, a more discreet way to draw his attention to a specific direction than finger pointing. 'They look a lot like duros.'</p><p><em> Those </em> were three green skinned aliens, motley-eyed and wearing ridiculously elaborate hats. They were sitting behind a bare booth, the banner above it indicating their business was in bulk shipping.</p><p>'Neimoidians.' He answered, looking away. Of course she would never have encountered any in the depths of Coruscant. You couldn't grow a spine strong enough in one of their grubs to make them go below the fiftieth level. 'Don't let any other duros hear you say we're similar. They're descended from us, but that was forever ago. They're all merchants and cowards. They'll faint at the sight of blood and keel over from too much excitement. They're good for abductions, ransoms. They don't resist, can't handle torture either, so information gathering is easy too. Just be careful dealing with powerful ones. They have long memories and can hold a grudge. Kill them if you can get away with it.'</p><p>She hummed, taking the lesson in. 'Where do they come from then? Not Duro?'</p><p>'Neimoidia, and some colony worlds. Biggest is Cato Neimoidia. Not a nice place. You haven't studied the charts of that part of space yet.'</p><p>'Are they good to work for?'</p><p>He pondered that for a moment. It was a trick question these days. The war had changed many things. Cad Bane was a big name, had been one for years. His relationship with the galaxy's big players was not representative of that of other, small time bounty hunters.<br/>
Of course he had no intention of making Meeyan small time anything, but she'd need to make her own fame.</p><p>'Depends if they respect you. If they do, they won't try to play you. Just be very careful with them. Always ask yourself if you're taking in a neimoidian job or a separatist job. It's not the same.'</p><p>'Ah, I–'</p><p>'Neimoidians working for the separatists have a lot of shiny toys these days. They're not banking on strategy as much as numb–'</p><p>'Cad, Cad,' she interrupted, squirming to get down. 'I think I found it, I want to go look!'</p><p>He let her down, snatching his hat back and following her to a side alley, barking after Todo who was straying too far ahead. It was like he had two kids, really.</p><p>At least this time Meeyan had picked something that would really be for herself, and looked like it was in the range of her allowance.</p><p>'Can I try them on?' She asked the rodian merchant.</p><p>'Of course. But you're so young, you should not pick them to fit. Here, try these. They'll last you a little longer because you'll grow into them a little.'</p><p>She did as she was told and observed the result, mouth pursed and expression deadly serious.</p><p>'What do you think?' She asked, turning to Cad. 'Is it okay?'</p><p>She extended her hands out, an offer for him to take a closer look, and he took them in his. They matched now, both of them wearing sturdy fingerless leather gloves, except the ones on Meeyan didn't have the metal connectors for the vambraces. Not yet. That was for handling difficult prey, and Jedi. That was for the future. Those would do for now.</p><p>'Can I buy them?'</p><p>'Yeah,' he said, smiling down at her. 'Great pick.'</p><p>She smiled right back and excitedly took out her credits, paid for her new gloves, and painfully counted her change with her purple tongue poking out in concentration. The rodian shot an amused glance at Cad, mouthing a silent <em>'very cute' </em>to him. He nodded his agreement while she established she had all of her sixty-four cents and had not been swindled.</p><p>'Amazing,' Todo noted, flying in to take a closer look. 'Now you only need a leather jacket to match master Bane!'</p><p>'Oh. Maybe they sell some here?' </p><p>And with that she was off running again.</p><p>'No!' Todo called out, trailing after her, 'my map indicates this is not the direction to the droid district! Meeyan! Come back!'</p><p>'They look like a handful,' the rodian said, chuckling.</p><p>'Yeah, you could say that.'</p><p>'Well, good luck stranger!'</p><p>'Thanks,' Cad said. He tipped his hat to the man and went after his handful of trouble.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you for your patience guys, and sorry for the wait! I went to write an Obi-Wan Febuwhump one shot and next thing you know I was writing 20k of it. But it's over and I'm back to focusing on my favourite scrappy family.<br/>This was not the intended next chapter, but a prompt for my SW fanfic discord, "marketplace". It happens to work well within the continuity right now, so I'm making it a chapter, but it's more of an indulgent bit of world building, as you might have noticed. Not like next chapter will be dripping with plot, but we're getting there.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Fanart!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>As I wrap up the next chapter, I'm teasing you all with some fanart for this series. Some was commissioned and some fan and author made.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hello everyone! Here is an unusual chapter, and I hope it won't irritate too many of you [I'm looking at you in particular, crazy people subbed to this series! I love you] !!</p><p>I'm almost done writing the next chapter. I've been struggling with it for two months, for reasons unknown to me. It was not working, but it was where I wanted to take the story, so I persevered (and distracted myself very successfully with new series and one shots *nervous chuckle*) and now I'm nearly done. I hope to have it in my sweet betas' hands within a week, and next weekend is going to be a good deadline. [And I do love a deadline, especially the noise they make as they rush you by]</p><p>Anyway, I find myself in a very unusual situation. In these two months I've gotten more fanart commissioned or gifted than I can reasonably post in A/Ns. So I'm making this interlude chapter to show off said art! Hope you like it!</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>Cad and Meeyan going through Alsaraz-Adi market.</p><p>This is some absolutely fabulous art made by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/megaramikaeli/">Megara</a> whose IG will show more of her excellent work!</p><p>This is a commission, and I'm over the moon with it. She was so easy to work with, and so quick! Can't recommend ordering an OC done with her hard enough! Her style is super sweet and I've seen her work often on my SW nerd discord! I'm gonna have them printed on a tee-shirt, I kriffing swear it.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>This take on a grown-up Meeyan is my own work! Done in Corel Painter 2015.</p><p>If you want to see the lineart, the sketch layer and more of the process, you can have a look at <a href="https://bluedaddysgirl.tumblr.com/post/647637144530190337/a-fanart-of-my-oc-meeyan-from-ill-make-it-worth">the tumblr post I made</a> for it.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>And this lovely one was made based off of my ongoing work above by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/ILoveDragonsALot/pseuds/ILoveDragonsALot">ILoveDragonsALot</a>, who also did a piece for <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26899279/chapters/72293067">The Tactician!</a></p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Even though one is my own piece and another a commission, I still feel so chuffed! It's crazy cool to see one's OCs come to life, just as sweet as when readers take to them. Now don't misunderstand me, Cad is still the star of the show... Maybe one day I'll try and draw them both blasting stuff together.</p><p>In the meantime, I'll go back to writing them getting there!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Dobrah Murishani</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p><i>Don't publish on May the 4th!</i> My writer friends tell me. <i>No one will see it! There'll be too much content.</i></p><p>Me, doing what I call a pro-fanfic-writer move, publishing on May the 3rd!  ᕕ(¬ ͜ ¬)ᕗ</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Huttese translations are at the end of the chapter. </p><p>Thank you all for your patience. This chapter has been plaguing me for forever and I am so glad to be yeeting it into the world. You can expect things to flow better in the future.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em> 'Coo sa chuba?' </em> Cad asked.</p><p><em> 'Dobrah murishani.' </em> Meeyan replied, puffing her chest. <em> 'Oto mwa creeda.'<br/></em></p><p>
  <em> 'Haku niboba a u naga?'<br/></em>
</p><p>
  <em> 'Kickee, va mwa che copah sa... wonky!'<br/></em>
</p><p><em> 'Dan,' </em> he said, smiling. <em> Good</em>. Very good, actually.</p><p>Meeyan was proving to have a knack for languages. He didn't know if it stemmed from her need to adapt on the streets of Coruscant or from some natural inclination but the results were indisputable. Most twis he'd met struggled to pick up Basic and forever dragged a Ryl accent, let alone become fluent in three languages. He had half a mind to teach her his native Durese, if only for the pleasure of having someone to talk to in it.</p><p><em> 'Ateema stuta do blastoh!' </em> He said, and slapped the gravity controls. <em> Now fetch your blaster. </em></p><p>Meeyan, who was barefoot, held on to the workbench, waiting for him. Cad tossed the pieces of her DL-44 into the hold, one after the other, all at different angles and speed. The pieces scattered, clattering on walls and crates and spinning off into the air. He nodded to Meeyan and she pushed off the ground, flying up to the ceiling and after her blaster parts.</p><p>After basic self-defence had come firearm safety. He had made her dismantle and reassemble blasters, bombs and detonators, pore over circuits and blueprints. He had bought junk and spare parts by the bucket and taught her to fix and refit. He'd trained her to disarm, steal blasters right out of wannabe captors’ hands. She'd taken to escaping handcuffs with a passion.<br/>Finally he'd made room in the small cargo hold for zero G training and made her practice in it, to grow accustomed to moving around with or without magboots, doing repair jobs and lock splicing on the fly.</p><p>'If you're the most mobile in a situation where everyone panics,' he'd told her, 'then you've got the high ground when no one else has any ground at all.'</p><p>She was good at it. Her usual time for this specific exercise was consistently under two minutes, but he'd been too nice to her and she wasn't expecting deception. After their rocky start together, she'd gone and overcompensated, growing much too trustful of him, thinking he always had her best interests at heart. Which, <em> he did, </em> but he'd be a reckless instructor if he let her expect the best out of people as a rule.</p><p>'What is taking you so karking long?' He snapped, keeping his business face on and his tone as annoyed as possible. 'Ain't got all day. Been four minutes already, you're getting sloppy.'</p><p>Meeyan strung as many Huttese swears as she knew in one long and breathless whine.</p><p>'I'm missing the heat sink module!' She exclaimed, frustrated.</p><p>He watched her struggle with her DL-44 with private amusement. He swayed lazily in the zero G, anchored to the floor by the soles of his boots while she drifted above him, twisting around in her search for the last missing piece needed to complete the blaster's assembly—a piece nestled in Cad's palm and held behind his back.</p><p>Meeyan hooked her bare feet under one of the cargo crane beams on the ceiling. It was much harder to read lekku signs when they floated loose behind her head, but Cad was certain they were rippling with frustrated twitches. Her eyes, a lurid pink in the hold's fluorescent lights, scanned the room meticulously before settling back on Cad.</p><p>'You didn't toss it with the rest, did you?'</p><p>At last.</p><p>'What are you gonna do about it?' Cad growled.</p><p>Meeyan's snarls were fangless and hence not too fearsome, but the girl put spirit behind them. This one carried all the weight of her frustration. Cad hid his grin behind a display of bared teeth to match hers, daring her to make good on her threat.</p><p>She shoved the unfinished blaster in her belt and launched herself from the ceiling, gunning straight for him. It was a short distance, but she could hardly pick up speed with a single push in zero G, and it took a single step to dodge her entirely.</p><p>Meeyan folded on herself to land feet first against the deck and bounce back.</p><p>Cad could have avoided her again, but there was no point being this hard on the kid. This wasn't a mobility exercise. He let himself be tackled, the absence of gravity softening the blow. He shoved the missing heat sink in the back pocket of his pants and grabbed Meeyan by a lek with both hands. She yelped and twisted, hooking her arm around his and slamming her feet into his chest. She freed herself in a smooth and practised motion.</p><p>One that wasn't supposed to leave blood on Cad's hand.</p><p>'You're bleeding,' he said, startled. 'But I didn't—'</p><p>Duros not having nails, he couldn't have scratched her. Meeyan floated away from him, taken by the momentum of their scuffle. She touched the back of her head gingerly, where lek met skull and bone turned to cartilage.</p><p>'Ah, yes,' she said, unphased by the blood on her fingers. 'My skin cracks there. It's dry and itchy, and sometimes I scratch during the night and it bleeds. I put bacta on it but my skin is still kinda dry.'</p><p>'What? How long has this been going on?'</p><p>She shrugged.</p><p>'Come over here, I'll have a look,' Cad intimated.</p><p>Meeyan could hardly move to him until she hit the wall, so he went after her, grumbling, and wrangled her into position so she was floating upside down, giving him a good view of the chaffed and offending skin. Sure enough, it was cracked in places and dark purple scabs had formed along the worst of it. One of them was oozing, a fat drop of violet blood threatening to break out and float away.<br/>Cad pressed his palm to it, smearing it against the lek.</p><p>'Hope you realise bleeding on your opponent ain't a valid strategy,' he muttered.</p><p>'It worked though!' Meeyan replied with a laugh.</p><p>'I don't see you with a completed blaster so I don't know what you're talking about.'</p><p>It was not his first time seeing the kid bleed. So far she had managed to cut herself three times, once on shattered glass from the hydroponics she'd manhandled, once from a kitchen knife and once from a karking piece of <em> flimsi. </em> Twi'leks apparently had a good for nothing skin that broke at the slightest graze, just like humans. Cad had also been responsible for another instance of bleeding by breaking her nose with a misjudged snap of his elbow during wrestling practice. He'd been far more shaken by the experience than Meeyan.<br/>She bled, she winced, but she never complained, which invited unsavoury thoughts about her tolerance to pain and the past that had led her to it.<br/>Cad was often baffled by the things she needed to be taught and those she'd already acquired. The doctor he'd brought her to on Alderaan had declared she was ten years old if he had to put a number on her. Ten years old, yet one day she'd walked into his room as he was dozing off, and he'd nearly gone and shot her. He'd had to introduce her to the concept of <em> knocking, </em> yet she could take a broken nose without flinching.</p><p>'It's because they're growing so fast,' Cad said at last, giving a squeeze to Meeyan's lek.</p><p>He probably should have anticipated something like this. She consumed food the way space vacuum consumed the inside of a breached ship. The only time she ever slowed down was when she was presented with new flavours. Cad had been indulging in his newfound personal chef and kept the galley well stocked. They ate three times a day, a luxury for both of them. But while Cad burnt calories through sheer spite and meanness of character, Meeyan had filled in. Or rather <em> out. </em> Her limbs remained whipcord thin, but some days Cad felt he could watch her get taller if he stared at her long enough. Her lekku were the one part of her that had both grown and plumped up, and a pattern of stripes had started to emerge in a deeper hue of blue. Maybe her skin was struggling to keep up.</p><p>'Guess I'll look for a cream or something,' Cad said. He doubted the gun oil he kept aboard would be much help. Bantha fat might work, but he didn't want to hear the kid harp about wasting food. One time had been enough. 'Let's put bacta on this anyway and call it a day.'</p><p>'Shopping?' Meeyan exclaimed, writhing under his grip as he swung her around so she didn't fall face first with the return of gravity. 'Can I come with?!'</p><p>'No.'</p><p>He returned the hold to normal and Meeyan stumbled to her feet. Cad deactivated his boots and made for the first aid kit.</p><p>'Why not?' She asked, undeterred.</p><p>'Because I'm not going shopping. I'm picking up a job, and I'll grab something for you on the way back. Come on.'</p><p>'But I've been on the ship for so long!' She protested, following on his heels, 'I haven't even been shooting my blaster! I don't even know how to use it!'</p><p>'Yes, because we're aboard the ship. Remind me of rule four?'</p><p>Meeyan rolled her eyes but complied. 'If you damage the ship you go out the airlock. I <em> know, </em> but if we went down on a planet somewhere I could learn to shoot <em> there.' </em></p><p>'You don't say. I never even thought of it.' Cad handed her a first aid bacta patch and crossed his arms, waiting for her to apply it and for this pointless conversation to end.</p><p>Meeyan was making full use of the other rule, the one that allowed her to ask any question she wanted, and ask and ask until Cad understood why humans had that weird expression about "ears falling off."</p><p>At the end of the day though the first rule was that his word was law aboard this ship.</p><p>'Remind me of your second most important lesson? The one you're supposed to be practising right now?'</p><p>This took the fight out of her. 'Patience wins all,' Meeyan grumbled, 'it's the best tool in my arsenal.'</p><p>'That's right. So show me some.'</p><p>She made a face and put her hand out. 'Can I have my heat sink back?'</p><p>Cad was about to give it to her and say something to cheer her up, to set some goal to reach before he took her training down to a planet—she needed to learn how to track and how to swim anyway, and get over her fear of critters and beasts. He wasn't sure how excited she'd be when they arrived on Felucia—when his comm beeped with a familiar tune. A secure line call from Kello.</p><p>'Later,' he said to Meeyan, 'go and ask Todo to help with your navigation. I'll quiz you afterwards.'</p><p>He watched her wilt. There wasn't a sane sentient in the galaxy who enjoyed looking at nav charts and learning routes by heart, but it was another necessary evil of their profession.</p><p>'If you score perfect on all the sectors you've studied so far, I'll actually take you shopping.' He heard himself say. Meeyan squinted her eyes at him, scanning his face carefully. Learning that getting her hopes up was bad business. Excellent. 'I mean it.' Though honestly he wasn't sure why.</p><p>'You swear?'</p><p>'On Todo's head.'</p><p>The kid snorted. 'He says you blew him up once.'</p><p>'Yes, it cost a lot of money to buy a new unit and he nearly made me regret saving his memory banks, so trust me, I don't want a repeat of that. Study hard, test after dinner.'</p><p>'Can I make instant sabor then?'</p><p>Cad gave her a look. This shopping trip must truly mean a lot to her if she was willing to sacrifice a meal to dehydrated protein rations to get more time to study.</p><p><em> Kark, but I'll have to go easy on her, </em> he thought grimly.</p><p>What was happening to him that he couldn't just say "No" to a brat and be done with it? First he negotiated, and now he was basically prepping her for success.</p><p>'That or leftovers, I don't care.'</p><p>And off she went, screaming for Todo to boot on from his charging station and come help.</p><p>Cad shook his head and went to the cockpit. He slid into the co-pilot's chair and reached out for the comms there, typing his access codes until Kello appeared in holographic blues. The dug was pulling at the tendrils at his snoot, a careful and deliberate gesture that spoke of a deep focus.</p><p>'My friend, I have news for you,' he said, looking up.</p><p>'Worthy of a call? It best be good, I'm starting to think I paid you for hot air.'</p><p>Kello frowned. 'You pay me for information and the truth, and I'm giving you both. Not my fault if you don't like what you get. This though...'</p><p>The dug's face was replaced by that of a human male. It was hard to read human complexions on holos, but he had dark eyes and hair, and the text displayed on the side claimed he was on the shorter end, had light skin, was missing a front tooth and was officially registered as being thirty-two. His name, written in bold under his chin, was <em> Kernim. </em></p><p>'What am I looking at?' Cad asked.</p><p>'A fellow bounty hunter. The small time kind. I got the intel off the guild, where he has an account, but what I heard that might interest you is that he's been going around asking Cad Bane this, Cad Bane that.'</p><p>Cad smirked. 'Could be a fan.'</p><p>Kello's face replaced the human's. He was grinning like Cad was a riot. 'Bane, my friend, your true fans know not to attract your attention. This lad has been going around asking where to find you, and what jobs you're taking on.'</p><p>'Like he's hoping to make crew?'</p><p>Kello nodded. 'He's got a lot of cold bounties to his name. Like I said, small time stuff. But recently he got a job with Sing. Out on Dantooine. They were working with Vooroosk on the tech, that's how I knew to look for the guy. Vooroosk likes bourbon and chit chat. Told me Kernim was quizzing Sing about you, thinking himself discreet maybe, or just not caring? I looked into him some more, and he also enquired after jobs you might be on at the Gusha Waba.'</p><p>'What, is he stupid?' Cad asked, genuinely baffled. The Gusha Waba, the <em> lucky wish </em> in Huttese, was a trade bar deeply connected to the bounty hunting guild. Cad had no direct association with them. He didn't like to play by their rules, and liked the middleman's fees even less. Asking about a notorious free agent like him at the Gusha Waba was likely to start some... <em>Interesting</em> conversations.</p><p>'Or he's trying to get your attention? You've not done anything high profile in a while, you’re hard to find. It's almost like you've gone to ground.'</p><p>'Oh I've been around,' Cad said, waving his hand dismissively.</p><p>Things were... different, with Meeyan aboard.</p><p>For a while Cad had believed he could return to normal, before too long. At first he'd favoured shorter jobs that didn't require undercover or extended transit. Black Sun always wanted someone dead and he could have his pick of bounties with them. While such stints wouldn't do much to build his name, it would flush up the accounts. He traveled with the Needle, parked in high orbits, worked with the Xanadu, and never stayed away more than a couple of days. He trusted Meeyan not to destroy his ship, but not so much that he'd risk taking Todo away.</p><p>But then his normal had changed, new habits and routines creeping up on him.</p><p>It was in the way he wondered what Meeyan had prepared for dinner when hunger pinched his stomach, how he pondered on her progress and thought of new things to teach her, or called her while he was away to make sure she was alright. He always returned with new study material to plug into her console, and promptly distracted her from it with practical lessons.<br/>Then there was all the research he did himself, like for the lekku locks. Grabbing a twi by the lek was the oldest trick in the book and it worked way too easily. She needed to know these things, and he needed to know about poisons and toxins, Twi'lek morphology and biology, physiological abilities, and the limits he could push her beyond and those he should be mindful of. He just happened to take unexpected pleasure in the whole process. It was something new. He'd have new lines etched in his forehead before he was done with her education, but it was... A satisfying sort of novelty. <br/>And then there was Meeyan herself. She might have an attitude, but she was obedient. She had an eagerness to please that made her an engaging student. Cad, who had never in his wildest dreams or nightmares planned on ever being saddled with a child, knew he was lucky she was such a hard worker.</p><p>So here he was now, spending more time training her and eating her cooking than chasing credits, actively turning down high profile jobs because he couldn't afford a stint in jail for the kid's sake, and newsmongers like Kello thinking him on the down low...</p><p>Cad shook his head. Meeyan's existence should remain a secret for as long as possible, for both their sake. Let Kello think him paranoid.</p><p>'I've been working but keeping it simple,' he explained. 'I don't want to take on anything big while trailing such a dodgy loose end. Anyway, if this Kernim's trying for attention, I guess it's a job well done.'</p><p>'Well, that could be reading too much into it,' Kello said. If he had second thoughts about Cad's attitude, he wisely kept them to himself. 'Not sure you'd ever notice the likes of him if I weren't on the lookout for you. The galaxy is full of idiots after all.'</p><p>
  <em> 'And may it stay that way.' </em>
</p><p><em> 'For our unending profits, </em> yes.'</p><p>'Can you send me a history of his recent contracts, just in case?'</p><p>The dug's whiskers twitched. 'That's the thing. He has been very on and off with the guild. The job he did with Sing was off the books. I can send you what there is, but it's patchy.'</p><p>'Freelancing, huh.' Cad tapped his lips. </p><p>Maybe it <em> was </em> an idiot. The sort who had heard tales of his wilder feats, choked on his beer when some impossible amount of credit had been whispered. Cad's mythical stash was always bound to be exaggerated. Day to day hunters living off the same ship they worked with wouldn't be aware of the cost of maintaining a hidden space station, several hide outs, acquiring new ships, refitting them... Or feeding a semi feral Twi'Lek.</p><p>It could be nothing. This Kernim man could be after a slice of Cad's profits. Or he could be a new assassin, searching for him publicly in hopes of drawing him out. It would still be stupid, but commissioning a Coruscant gang to take him out in a street shooting was an equally brain dead plan, so that could be a pattern.</p><p>'Find out what you can,' he told Kello, 'put that fire gem to some use. I'll talk to Sing. Ah, and tell me, what's going on with Mul Muva?'</p><p>The dug smiled, revealing long teeth. 'The funeral was a while ago now. You should have been there, it was a sight. Grakkus came.'</p><p>'For real?'</p><p>'Are you surprised? Couldn't own the man while he was alive, of course he has to have the last word now he's dead. It was all good though... There was a little commotion in the end in the Whispers part of the ceremony, when the will was read.'</p><p>Cad kept his professional face on. 'Let me guess... A few items on his will were nowhere to be found?'</p><p>'Quite a few.'</p><p>'Is Grakkus getting involved?'</p><p>'No, no! Why would he? I mean, it's just to be <em>expected,</em> isn't it? When you meet such a tragic end at the hands of thieves.'</p><p>'Too true,' Cad agreed.</p><p>Their private bantering was a little sordid, but that was just the way of things. He too had plans set up and wills drawn out, if he met an untimely death. Which, he suddenly realised, would need updating to take Meeyan into account.</p><p>'I'll be in touch then.' Kello said as farewell and disappeared, leaving behind the glowing alert of a new data package.</p><p>Cad opened it and looked again at the human, committing his bland face to memory. It was a new lead, one worth exploring. He had to talk to Aurra. She would be a pain. The easiest way was to get her in for a job. It was a lot of planning ahead, but that was alright, Cad had long ago learned the lesson of patience he had started to teach Meeyan.</p><p>And first, her navigational test.</p><p>Cad sighed, punched the coordinates for Coruscant. They weren't far, and there was no point fooling himself. They were going shopping no matter what.</p><p> </p><p> </p><h3>Huttese dialogue :</h3><p>— Who are you</p><p>— I’m a bounty hunter... I want my credits.</p><p>— What contracts do you want?</p><p>— Any, but my price is... mighty!</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>